Why Projects Management Fails?
Poor planning
Unclear goals and objectives
Objectives changing during the project
Wrong resource estimates
Lack of executive support and user involvement
Failure to communicate and act as a team
Inappropriate skills
Thursday, July 8, 2010
As A Project Manager Which Situation You Think is Worse?
As A Project Manager Which Situation You Think is Worse?
.Successfully building and implementing a system that provides little or no value to the organization.
Or…
.Failing to implement an information system that could have provided value to the organization, but was poorly developed or poorly managed.
.Successfully building and implementing a system that provides little or no value to the organization.
Or…
.Failing to implement an information system that could have provided value to the organization, but was poorly developed or poorly managed.
Why do we need project management techniques?
Why do we need project management techniques?
.Clear work descriptions
.Minimize surprises and conflicts
.Responsibilities and assignments for specific tasks are easily identified
.Progress can be measured against a plan
.Clear work descriptions
.Minimize surprises and conflicts
.Responsibilities and assignments for specific tasks are easily identified
.Progress can be measured against a plan
Google wants to patent technology used to 'snoop' Wi-Fi networks
Google wants to patent technology used to 'snoop' Wi-Fi networks
lawyers in class-action suit link patent application to Street View data sniffing
Google's secret Wi-Fi snooping was powered by new sniffing technology that the company wants to patent, court documents filed Wednesday alleged.
A just-amended complaint in a class-action lawsuit first submitted two weeks ago claims that a patent Google submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in November 2008 shows that the search giant purposefully created technology to gather, analyze and use data sent by users over their wireless networks. The lawsuit, which was filed by an Oregon woman and a Washington man in a Portland, Ore. federal court May 17, accused Google of violating federal privacy and data acquisition laws when its Street View vehicles snatched data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks as they drove up and down U.S. streets.
Google acknowledged the privacy issue May 14, but said it had not known it was collecting data from unprotected wireless networks until recently.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Oregon lawsuit upped the ante Wednesday when they amended the original lawsuit to include charges that Google filed for a patent on Wi-Fi sniffing technology more than a year and a half ago.
According to the modified complaint, Google's technology can collect the make and model of wireless routers, the street address of that router and even the "approximate location of the wireless AP [access point] within the user's residence or business."
In its patent application , Google noted that multiple antennas could be mounted on vehicles, which would be able to obtain a more accurate estimate of the router's location based on a "stereo" effect.
Google has admitted that it sniffed basic wireless network information -- including the network and router identifiers -- to map those networks, which would then be used by mobile devices such as smartphones to pinpoint their locations in Google's mapping services. Google has claimed, however, that the code which grabbed data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks was added to the Street View vehicles data sniffers by mistake.
But the plaintiffs' lawyers said Google's patent application showed that the company's Wi-Fi locating technology had more in mind than just basic information.
"As disclosed in the '776 Application, the more types and greater the quantity of Wi-Fi data obtained, decoded, and analyzed by Google from any particular user, the higher its 'confidence level' in the calculated location of that user's wireless AP," the changed lawsuit stated. "Collection, decoding, and analysis of a user's payload data would, therefore, serve to increase the accuracy, value, usability, and marketability of Google's new method."
"Payload data" is the term given to the information transmitted over wireless networks, including the data that Google said it unintentionally snatched from the air as its Street View cars and trucks drove by homes and businesses.
lawyers in class-action suit link patent application to Street View data sniffing
Google's secret Wi-Fi snooping was powered by new sniffing technology that the company wants to patent, court documents filed Wednesday alleged.
A just-amended complaint in a class-action lawsuit first submitted two weeks ago claims that a patent Google submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in November 2008 shows that the search giant purposefully created technology to gather, analyze and use data sent by users over their wireless networks. The lawsuit, which was filed by an Oregon woman and a Washington man in a Portland, Ore. federal court May 17, accused Google of violating federal privacy and data acquisition laws when its Street View vehicles snatched data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks as they drove up and down U.S. streets.
Google acknowledged the privacy issue May 14, but said it had not known it was collecting data from unprotected wireless networks until recently.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Oregon lawsuit upped the ante Wednesday when they amended the original lawsuit to include charges that Google filed for a patent on Wi-Fi sniffing technology more than a year and a half ago.
According to the modified complaint, Google's technology can collect the make and model of wireless routers, the street address of that router and even the "approximate location of the wireless AP [access point] within the user's residence or business."
In its patent application , Google noted that multiple antennas could be mounted on vehicles, which would be able to obtain a more accurate estimate of the router's location based on a "stereo" effect.
Google has admitted that it sniffed basic wireless network information -- including the network and router identifiers -- to map those networks, which would then be used by mobile devices such as smartphones to pinpoint their locations in Google's mapping services. Google has claimed, however, that the code which grabbed data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks was added to the Street View vehicles data sniffers by mistake.
But the plaintiffs' lawyers said Google's patent application showed that the company's Wi-Fi locating technology had more in mind than just basic information.
"As disclosed in the '776 Application, the more types and greater the quantity of Wi-Fi data obtained, decoded, and analyzed by Google from any particular user, the higher its 'confidence level' in the calculated location of that user's wireless AP," the changed lawsuit stated. "Collection, decoding, and analysis of a user's payload data would, therefore, serve to increase the accuracy, value, usability, and marketability of Google's new method."
"Payload data" is the term given to the information transmitted over wireless networks, including the data that Google said it unintentionally snatched from the air as its Street View cars and trucks drove by homes and businesses.
Hackers exploit Windows XP zero-day, Microsoft confirms
Hackers exploit Windows XP zero-day, Microsoft confirms
Hackers are now exploiting the zero-day Windows vulnerability that a Google engineer took public last week, Microsoft confirmed today.
Although Microsoft did not share details of the attack, other researchers filled in the blanks.
A compromised Web site is serving an exploit of the bug in Windows' Help and Support Center to hijack PCs running Windows XP, said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos. Cluley declined to identify the site, saying only that it was dedicated to open-source software.
"It's a classic drive-by attack," said Cluley, referring to an attack that infects a PC when its user simply visits a malicious or compromised site. The tactic was one of two that Microsoft said last week were the likely attack avenues. The other: Convincing users to open malicious e-mail messages.
According to Microsoft, the exploit has since been scrubbed from the hacked Web site, but it expects more to surface. "We do anticipate future exploitation given the public disclosure of full details of the issue," said Jerry Bryant. Microsoft's group manager of response communications.
The vulnerability was disclosed last Thursday by Tavis Ormandy, a security engineer who works for Google . Ormandy, who also posted proof-of-concept attack code, defended his decision to reveal the flaw only five days after reporting it to Microsoft -- a move that Microsoft and other researchers questioned.
Today, Cluley called Ormandy's action "utterly irresponsible," and in a blog post asked, "Tavis Ormandy -- are you pleased with yourself?"
The five-day stretch between the day Ormandy reported the bug to Microsoft and when he publicly disclosed the flaw stuck in Cluley's craw. "Five days isn't enough time to expect Microsoft to develop a fix, which has to be tested thoroughly to ensure it doesn't cause more problems than it intends to correct," Cluley said.
In a message on Twitter last week, Ormandy said that he released the information because Microsoft would not commit to producing a patch within 60 days. "I'm getting pretty tired of all the '5 days' hate mail. Those five days were spent trying to negotiate a fix within 60 days," Ormandy said on Saturday .
Microsoft confirmed that its security team had discussed a patch schedule with Ormandy.
"We were in the early phases of the investigation and communicated [to him] on 6/7 that we would not know what our release schedule would be until the end of the week," said Bryant. "We were surprised by the public release of details on the 9th."
Microsoft issued a security advisory on the vulnerability last Thursday that acknowledged the bug and offered up a manual workaround it said would protect users against attack. The next day, it posted a "Fix it" tool that automatically unregisters the HCP protocol handler, a move Microsoft said "would help block known attack vectors before a security update is available."
The in-the-wild attack code is very similar to the proof-of-concept that Ormandy published last week, said Cluley.
Hackers are now exploiting the zero-day Windows vulnerability that a Google engineer took public last week, Microsoft confirmed today.
Although Microsoft did not share details of the attack, other researchers filled in the blanks.
A compromised Web site is serving an exploit of the bug in Windows' Help and Support Center to hijack PCs running Windows XP, said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos. Cluley declined to identify the site, saying only that it was dedicated to open-source software.
"It's a classic drive-by attack," said Cluley, referring to an attack that infects a PC when its user simply visits a malicious or compromised site. The tactic was one of two that Microsoft said last week were the likely attack avenues. The other: Convincing users to open malicious e-mail messages.
According to Microsoft, the exploit has since been scrubbed from the hacked Web site, but it expects more to surface. "We do anticipate future exploitation given the public disclosure of full details of the issue," said Jerry Bryant. Microsoft's group manager of response communications.
The vulnerability was disclosed last Thursday by Tavis Ormandy, a security engineer who works for Google . Ormandy, who also posted proof-of-concept attack code, defended his decision to reveal the flaw only five days after reporting it to Microsoft -- a move that Microsoft and other researchers questioned.
Today, Cluley called Ormandy's action "utterly irresponsible," and in a blog post asked, "Tavis Ormandy -- are you pleased with yourself?"
The five-day stretch between the day Ormandy reported the bug to Microsoft and when he publicly disclosed the flaw stuck in Cluley's craw. "Five days isn't enough time to expect Microsoft to develop a fix, which has to be tested thoroughly to ensure it doesn't cause more problems than it intends to correct," Cluley said.
In a message on Twitter last week, Ormandy said that he released the information because Microsoft would not commit to producing a patch within 60 days. "I'm getting pretty tired of all the '5 days' hate mail. Those five days were spent trying to negotiate a fix within 60 days," Ormandy said on Saturday .
Microsoft confirmed that its security team had discussed a patch schedule with Ormandy.
"We were in the early phases of the investigation and communicated [to him] on 6/7 that we would not know what our release schedule would be until the end of the week," said Bryant. "We were surprised by the public release of details on the 9th."
Microsoft issued a security advisory on the vulnerability last Thursday that acknowledged the bug and offered up a manual workaround it said would protect users against attack. The next day, it posted a "Fix it" tool that automatically unregisters the HCP protocol handler, a move Microsoft said "would help block known attack vectors before a security update is available."
The in-the-wild attack code is very similar to the proof-of-concept that Ormandy published last week, said Cluley.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Microsoft's cloud is slower than Google's, Amazon's,
Microsoft's cloud is slower than Google's, Amazon's, benchmark says
Over the past month, App Engine was speedier than both Azure and EC2, but Azure is fighting back.
Over the past month, Google's cloud, App Engine, performed faster than all of the other major clouds, including Microsoft's Azure. Azure was also consistently slower than at least one of Amazon's EC2 data centers, according to a live benchmarking service known as CloudSleuth.com.
Ironically, I was poking into cloud benchmarking hoping to learn that Microsoft Azure was faster than both Amazon and Google. I learned about the CloudSleuth.com from a blog post on MSDN when a Microsoft employee was bragging that Azure was outperforming the others this week. That result must have been a blip in the data because as I sliced the data, Azure never landed on top.
Google's average was about 1 second faster than Azure's, at least for the last 30 days.
CloudSleuth was created as a free online service by Compuware. These are the same folks that built the Gomez benchmarking tests that monitor Web app performance metrics such as comparing the same Web site loading into different browsers. (Compuware is a vendor of application performance monitoring tools.) Ergo, CloudSleuth uses the Gomez Performance Network (GPN) to measure the performance of an identical sample application running on several popular cloud service providers.
One day soon, CloudSleuth hopes to let users upload and compare their own cloud app to be benchmarked across the participating cloud vendors.
While playing with this site, I noticed that in the past few hours and days, Azure has been performing faster than all the other clouds except OpSource. (By the way, CloudSleuth names OpSource as a partner, though I can't say that this partnership affects the benchmarking results. The 30-day result clearly showed Google App Engine as faster than OpSource, but much of the time, OpSource lands on top.)
CloudSleuth shares all the details about the app used to benchmark the tests. It uses the default recommended configurations for each cloud service, although there are inherent differences between "old fashioned" hosting providers today known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service providers (PaaS) which includes Azure and App Engine. The sample app is an e-commerce Web site.
Speed isn't the only consideration when comparing cloud services. But it is interesting to see that during any given period, an IaaS isn't always faster than a PaaS and vice versa.
Over the past month, App Engine was speedier than both Azure and EC2, but Azure is fighting back.
Over the past month, Google's cloud, App Engine, performed faster than all of the other major clouds, including Microsoft's Azure. Azure was also consistently slower than at least one of Amazon's EC2 data centers, according to a live benchmarking service known as CloudSleuth.com.
Ironically, I was poking into cloud benchmarking hoping to learn that Microsoft Azure was faster than both Amazon and Google. I learned about the CloudSleuth.com from a blog post on MSDN when a Microsoft employee was bragging that Azure was outperforming the others this week. That result must have been a blip in the data because as I sliced the data, Azure never landed on top.
Google's average was about 1 second faster than Azure's, at least for the last 30 days.
CloudSleuth was created as a free online service by Compuware. These are the same folks that built the Gomez benchmarking tests that monitor Web app performance metrics such as comparing the same Web site loading into different browsers. (Compuware is a vendor of application performance monitoring tools.) Ergo, CloudSleuth uses the Gomez Performance Network (GPN) to measure the performance of an identical sample application running on several popular cloud service providers.
One day soon, CloudSleuth hopes to let users upload and compare their own cloud app to be benchmarked across the participating cloud vendors.
While playing with this site, I noticed that in the past few hours and days, Azure has been performing faster than all the other clouds except OpSource. (By the way, CloudSleuth names OpSource as a partner, though I can't say that this partnership affects the benchmarking results. The 30-day result clearly showed Google App Engine as faster than OpSource, but much of the time, OpSource lands on top.)
CloudSleuth shares all the details about the app used to benchmark the tests. It uses the default recommended configurations for each cloud service, although there are inherent differences between "old fashioned" hosting providers today known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service providers (PaaS) which includes Azure and App Engine. The sample app is an e-commerce Web site.
Speed isn't the only consideration when comparing cloud services. But it is interesting to see that during any given period, an IaaS isn't always faster than a PaaS and vice versa.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Facebook founder and CEO responds to complaints, introduces new settings
By Mark Zuckerberg
Six years ago, we built Facebook around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that's more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today.
Facebook has been growing quickly. It has become a community of more than 400 million people in just a few years. It's a challenge to keep that many people satisfied over time, so we move quickly to serve that community with new ways to connect with the social Web and each other. Sometimes we move too fast — and after listening to recent concerns, we're responding.
The challenge is how a network like ours facilitates sharing and innovation, offers control and choice, and makes this experience easy for everyone. These are issues we think about all the time. Whenever we make a change, we try to apply the lessons we've learned along the way. The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.
We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services. We are working hard to make these changes available as soon as possible. We hope you'll be pleased with the result of our work and, as always, we'll be eager to get your feedback.
We have also heard that some people don't understand how their personal information is used and worry that it is shared in ways they don't want. I'd like to clear that up now. Many people choose to make some of their information visible to everyone so people they know can find them on Facebook. We already offer controls to limit the visibility of that information and we intend to make them even stronger.
Here are the principles under which Facebook operates:
You have control over how your information is shared.
We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want.
We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.
We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.
We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.
Facebook has evolved from a simple dorm-room project to a global social network connecting millions of people. We will keep building, we will keep listening and we will continue to have a dialogue with everyone who cares enough about Facebook to share their ideas. And we will keep focused on achieving our mission of giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected.
The writer is founder and chief executive of Facebook. Washington Post Chairman Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's board of directors.
Six years ago, we built Facebook around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that's more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today.
Facebook has been growing quickly. It has become a community of more than 400 million people in just a few years. It's a challenge to keep that many people satisfied over time, so we move quickly to serve that community with new ways to connect with the social Web and each other. Sometimes we move too fast — and after listening to recent concerns, we're responding.
The challenge is how a network like ours facilitates sharing and innovation, offers control and choice, and makes this experience easy for everyone. These are issues we think about all the time. Whenever we make a change, we try to apply the lessons we've learned along the way. The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.
We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services. We are working hard to make these changes available as soon as possible. We hope you'll be pleased with the result of our work and, as always, we'll be eager to get your feedback.
We have also heard that some people don't understand how their personal information is used and worry that it is shared in ways they don't want. I'd like to clear that up now. Many people choose to make some of their information visible to everyone so people they know can find them on Facebook. We already offer controls to limit the visibility of that information and we intend to make them even stronger.
Here are the principles under which Facebook operates:
You have control over how your information is shared.
We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want.
We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.
We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.
We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.
Facebook has evolved from a simple dorm-room project to a global social network connecting millions of people. We will keep building, we will keep listening and we will continue to have a dialogue with everyone who cares enough about Facebook to share their ideas. And we will keep focused on achieving our mission of giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected.
The writer is founder and chief executive of Facebook. Washington Post Chairman Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's board of directors.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Microsoft counters Gmail with Hotmail overhaul
Microsoft is trying to counter Google by overhauling Windows Live Hotmail with new online editing capabilities for Office documents, and more than two dozen other enhancements for business and home users.
Microsoft's refresh of Hotmail is being announced Tuesday, less than a week after the release of Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft strikes blow against Google with Office 2010
"The moment you receive an Office document as an attachment in Hotmail - Word, Excel or PowerPoint - you can open and view the attachment online in any popular browser, on PC or Mac and even if Office is not installed," Microsoft said in its latest announcement. "This results from the seamless integration between Hotmail, SkyDrive [Microsoft's free online storage service] and the Office Web Apps, so you can send, receive and work on a document with others."
Google, of course, offers online editing of documents through Gmail's integration with Google Docs, and the ability to import Microsoft Office documents into Google's online office suite.
Microsoft is increasingly adding to its lineup of Web-based office tools, while offering integration with existing on-premise software installations of Microsoft Office.
New Hotmail features announced this week will be incorporated into the service over the next few months, Microsoft said.
Microsoft promised improvements in the visual quality of Office documents displayed in web browsers, and said it will be easy for users to move back and forth between the Web-based version and the Office software installed on their PCs.
The announcement acknowledges that users may still need to use the packaged software version of Office for "intensive editing tasks."
"If you need to perform intensive editing tasks, you can go from editing the document in your browser with the Office Web Apps to editing it in an Office application on your PC," Microsoft said. "When you're finished, any edits you made to the document on your PC will be automatically saved back into the cloud where you can then keep the document stored for only you to see or share it with others."
Hotmail and Gmail are locked in a battle for second place in the webmail market. Each have more than 40 million users in the United States, with Hotmail claiming a small lead over Gmail. Yahoo still has more than twice as many users as its nearest competitors.
In addition to further Office integration, Microsoft said the new Hotmail will have enhanced security with full-session SSL; smarter junk mail filters and a "Trusted Senders" feature making it easier for users to distinguish between legitimate messages and scams.
Hotmail will also have conversation view – a feature Gmail already has – making it easier to view a single conversation that is spread out over many e-mails.
Hotmail users will be able to send up to 10GB of photos per message, and Microsoft, not surprisingly, is rolling out new mobile features to take advantage of the expanding smartphone market. For example, Microsoft said Hotmail will be optimized for rich mobile browsers and touch screens, while supporting "filters, in-line message previews, HTML messages, offline e-mail viewing, conversation threading, the ability to flag messages, the option to turn header details on or off, and more."
Microsoft's refresh of Hotmail is being announced Tuesday, less than a week after the release of Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft strikes blow against Google with Office 2010
"The moment you receive an Office document as an attachment in Hotmail - Word, Excel or PowerPoint - you can open and view the attachment online in any popular browser, on PC or Mac and even if Office is not installed," Microsoft said in its latest announcement. "This results from the seamless integration between Hotmail, SkyDrive [Microsoft's free online storage service] and the Office Web Apps, so you can send, receive and work on a document with others."
Google, of course, offers online editing of documents through Gmail's integration with Google Docs, and the ability to import Microsoft Office documents into Google's online office suite.
Microsoft is increasingly adding to its lineup of Web-based office tools, while offering integration with existing on-premise software installations of Microsoft Office.
New Hotmail features announced this week will be incorporated into the service over the next few months, Microsoft said.
Microsoft promised improvements in the visual quality of Office documents displayed in web browsers, and said it will be easy for users to move back and forth between the Web-based version and the Office software installed on their PCs.
The announcement acknowledges that users may still need to use the packaged software version of Office for "intensive editing tasks."
"If you need to perform intensive editing tasks, you can go from editing the document in your browser with the Office Web Apps to editing it in an Office application on your PC," Microsoft said. "When you're finished, any edits you made to the document on your PC will be automatically saved back into the cloud where you can then keep the document stored for only you to see or share it with others."
Hotmail and Gmail are locked in a battle for second place in the webmail market. Each have more than 40 million users in the United States, with Hotmail claiming a small lead over Gmail. Yahoo still has more than twice as many users as its nearest competitors.
In addition to further Office integration, Microsoft said the new Hotmail will have enhanced security with full-session SSL; smarter junk mail filters and a "Trusted Senders" feature making it easier for users to distinguish between legitimate messages and scams.
Hotmail will also have conversation view – a feature Gmail already has – making it easier to view a single conversation that is spread out over many e-mails.
Hotmail users will be able to send up to 10GB of photos per message, and Microsoft, not surprisingly, is rolling out new mobile features to take advantage of the expanding smartphone market. For example, Microsoft said Hotmail will be optimized for rich mobile browsers and touch screens, while supporting "filters, in-line message previews, HTML messages, offline e-mail viewing, conversation threading, the ability to flag messages, the option to turn header details on or off, and more."
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